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Using Twitter as a means of coping with emotions and uncontrollable crises
Abstract
Twitter is a popular social medium that has the capacity to provide real-time information to stakeholders and crisis managers during an organizational crisis. While several studies have described the multiple ways in which Twitter can be used by organizations to communicate with stakeholders, this study explores how stakeholder tweets can be analyzed by organizations to gauge the public's collective sentiment in order to construct messages that facilitate coping during a crisis. Using 0095 and 0105 Integrated Crisis Mapping Model, this study analyzes 818 tweets obtained immediately after a repeat crisis. Each tweet was analyzed according to the elements of perceived controllability and predictability, as well as the emotions and coping strategies used on behalf of the organization's external stakeholders. The findings of this study suggest ways in which organizations can provide support and clarity while trying to prevent reputational damage during a highly emotional crisis.
... Based on previous literature (Brummette and Sisco, 2015), this study defines post-crisis social media engagement behaviors as publics' coping behaviors on social media-behaviors such as information seeking, support seeking, and negative word-of-mouth after crises. Coping is defined as the cognitive and behavioral process in response to and in an attempt to reduce undesirable emotions from the environment (Duhachek, 2005). ...
... Coping can be cognitive (i.e., avoidance and denial) or behavioral (i.e., action taking and support seeking; (Duhachek, 2005). Social media has been identified as one of the resources for behavioral coping in times of crises (Brummette and Sisco, 2015). Publics engage with social media communication, for example, to seek information, share information, to seek social support, and to vent (Cho et al., 2013;Park, 2018;Tandoc and Takahashi, 2016). ...
... This study defines information seeking intentions as publics' intentions to seek media or user-generated content during and after a crisis to reduce stress or uncertainty (Kim and Niederdeppe, 2013). Beyond information seeking, instrumental and emotional support seeking are also considered primary coping strategies on social media (Brummette and Sisco, 2015). Publics may seek support from family or friends on social media for either practical problem-solving purposes (i.e., instrumental) or emotional regulation purposes (i.e., emotional) (Duhachek, 2005;Park, 2018). ...
This study examines the psychological mechanisms underlying the process that enables publics’ individual differences (e.g., the levels of uncertainty avoidance and social media usage) to give rise to varying post-crisis social media engagement intentions (e.g., information seeking, support seeking, and negative word-of-mouth). The study confirms that this process is serially mediated by perceived threat severity, perceived susceptibility, and negative emotions. These psychological mediators, however, function differently between uncertainty avoidance and social media usage. For uncertainty avoidance, a high arousal negative emotion (e.g., anger, fear) is a more essential step to influence engagement intentions than a low arousal emotion (e.g., shame, guilt). For social media usage, however, the type of aroused negative emotions does not matter. Rather, the relationship social media usage has with information seeking is different from that with support seeking and negative word-of-mouth intentions. Social media usage induces information seeking intentions only through publics’ cognitive appraisals of the situation without the activation of negative emotions, while it induces supporting seeking and negative word-of-mouth intentions through both cognitive appraisals and negative emotion arousals.
... Reference [30] proposed a disaster assessment model by correlating emotional data in voice and text communications with population density and disaster severity. Reference [31] found that during the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, anger was the most frequently expressed emotion on Twitter, followed by fright, sadness, and anxiety. In terms of natural disasters, Reference [21] collected microblogs about the "H7N9" influenza and classified them into different emotion categories using a supervised classification method. ...
... These studies are summarized in Table 1. In terms of emotion types, previous work has mainly focused on general public sentiment (positive, negative, or neural) detection (e.g., Reference [9,10,23,25,28]) or negative emotions after crises (e.g., Reference [29,31,33,37,39]). Most research on fine-grained public emotions is restricted to the assessment of emotion types and rarely explores the relationship between different types of public emotions in crises. ...
Objective:
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused substantial panic worldwide since its outbreak in December 2019. This study uses social networks to track the evolution of public emotion during COVID-19 in China and analyzes the root causes of these public emotions from an event-driven perspective.
Methods:
A dataset was constructed using microblogs (n = 125,672) labeled with COVID-19-related super topics (n = 680) from 40,891 users from 1 December 2019 to 17 February 2020. Based on the skeleton and key change points of COVID-19 extracted from microblogging contents, we tracked the public's emotional evolution modes (accumulated emotions, emotion covariances, and emotion transitions) by time phase and further extracted the details of dominant social events.
Results:
Public emotions showed different evolution modes during different phases of COVID-19. Events about the development of COVID-19 remained hot, but generally declined, and public attention shifted to other aspects of the epidemic (e.g., encouragement, support, and treatment).
Conclusions:
These findings suggest that the public's feedback on COVID-19 predated official accounts on the microblog platform. There were clear differences in the trending events that large users (users with many fans and readings) and common users paid attention to during each phase of COVID-19.
... For example, Coombs and Holladay (2012a) analyzed the effectiveness of an apology strategy for an online crisis and confirmed the effectiveness in managing the online crisis as prescribed in SCCT. Similarly, Brummette and Fussell Sisco (2015) applied SCCT for the case studies of three organizations' social media crises and found that the theory is useful to identify effective versus non-effective crisis response strategies to social media crises. More recently De Waele et al. (2020) examined how social media publics reacted to situational and renewing organizational responses across six crises based on SCCT and discourse of renewal (DOR) theory. ...
... As Benoit (2018) also notes with the United Airlines case, this points to the growing possibility of social media backlash occurring almost simultaneously with the crisis' occurrence, making speedy crisis response a priority. As such, Brummette & Fussell Sisco (2015) found that Twitter users tend to share emotions in their posts, thus recommending that organizations could monitor the platform to gauge public sentiments to craft better messages. ...
Based on the theoretical frameworks of situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and person-centered messages (PCMs), this interdisciplinary study conducted a 2 x 3 experiment to examine the role of PCMs in crisis management on social media. Our findings suggest that crisis type (victim, preventable) has an effect on people’s perceptions/reactions toward an organization and that PCM levels (low, medium, and high person-centered messages) in crisis communication on social media influence organizational reputation and participants’ intention to post negative feedback about the organization in crisis. We suggest that when organizations are responding to crisis online, they provide additional attention to the interpersonal dynamics of those interactions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
... To further extend the crisis communication scholarship from a stakeholder perspective, some scholars have examined stakeholder desired strategies on the Internet (Stephens & Malone, 2009), stakeholders' conative coping (Jin, Fraustino, & Liu, 2016) and information seeking or messaging behavior (Brummette & Sisco, 2015; H. K. Kim & Niederdeppe, 2013;Schultz, Utz & Goritz, 2011). Others have begun to explore the crisis response strategies employed by ...
... Lerbinger (2001) summarized confrontation tactics for discontented grassroots groups to press demands, solicit public approval, and attract media attention. More recently in crisis communication, studies have investigated stakeholders' responses in crisis situations, including stakeholders' willingness to seek out information about a crisis, face-to-face and online messaging behaviors, and ways to cope with the negative emotions incurred during a crisis (Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Coombs & Holladay, 2008;Jin et al., 2012;H. K. Kim & Niederdeppe, 2013;Schultz et al., 2011;Stephens & Malone, 2009;Tai & Sun, 2007). ...
In the previous decades, a large amount of crisis communication research has followed an organization-centric perspective and focused on exploring organizational response strategies to minimize negative reputational damage in crises. Our study conceptualized and operationalized stakeholder crisis communication strategies and developed a valid and reliable scale as an evaluation tool. In the context of the United Airlines crisis in April 2017, we conducted two separate online surveys. Results confirmed that a seven-factor instrument of stakeholder crisis response strategies was valid and reliable. Findings also suggested that information seeking was the most preferred response strategy of stakeholders, among a host of active response strategies ranging from the constructive-to destructive-orientation. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.
... To capture customers' post-crisis behavioral intentions, we combed the literature on public relations and coping strategies in crisis communication research. A handful of studies have begun investigating stakeholders' behavioral intentions after a crisis, often from a coping angle (e.g., Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Jin, Liu, & Austin, 2011;Kim & Neiderdeppe, 2013;Schultz, Utz, & Goritz, 2011;Stephens & Malone, 2009;Tai & Sun, 2007;Yang, 2018). Past research has examined stakeholders' willingness to seek crisis-related information from organizations, engage and request a dialogue with organizations either interpersonally or online, and online messaging behaviors for mobilization (e.g., Cammaerts, 2005Cammaerts, , 2007Freeman, 1984;Gibson et al., 2003;Gregory, 2007;Savage, Nix, Whitehead, & Blair, 1991;Utz et al., 2013). ...
... Information seeking intentions refer to people's tendency and willingness to find out more information about a crisis. People commonly need more and accurate information during risk and crisis situations to reduce anxiety and seek support (Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Jin et al., 2011;Kim and Neiderdeppe, 2013;Schultz et al., 2011). They often turn to both the organization and third parties, such as friends and families, either face to face or on the internet, for their information needs (Griffin et al., 2008;Jin et al., 2016;Kim, 2016;Schultz et al., 2011;Utz et al., 2013). ...
In the context of the United Airlines crisis, this study investigated the relationships among customers' ethical judgment, trust and distrust toward United Airlines, and post-crisis behavioral intentions. Results from an online survey (N = 579) demonstrated that customers' negative ethical judgment was positively associated with the level of trust and negatively predicted their distrust toward the corporation. Distrust had a bigger impact on stakeholders' behavioral intentions such as information seeking, mobilizing, and consulting than trust. Findings indicated the important role of customers in corporate crisis management. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.
... Among the various components identified in Coombs and Holladay (2012), the response to crises on social media is more heavily researched, from the perspective of public reactions. For example, Twitter was used as a means of coping with emotions and uncontrollable crises (Brummette & Sisco, 2015). Publics can react, respond, and communicate about crises through social media (Liu et al., 2013). ...
... Specifically, Brummette and Sisco (2015) analyzed stakeholder tweets to help organizations gauge the public's collective sentiment and construct coping messages during a crisis. They analyzed stakeholders' tweets after a crisis, based on perceived controllability and predictability, the emotions, and coping strategies. ...
... Perceptions of IDT controllability were measured with one item adapted from previous studies (Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Jin, 2010): "To what extent did you feel like you had control over the disease in the scenario you just read?" ...
... Perceptions of IDT predictability were measured with two items also adapted from previous studies (Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Jin, 2010): "How well could you predict what was going to happen next, based on the scenario you just read?" ...
Grounded in the multidisciplinary field of strategic risk and health communication, this study proposed and tested a new infectious disease threat (IDT) appraisal model, focused on mapping individuals’ coping strategy preferences as predicted by their perceived predictability and controllability of the disease. A 2 (predictability: high vs. low) × 2 (controllability: high vs. low) within-subjects online experimental design (N = 1,032 U.S. adults) was employed, in which four IDT scenarios (sexually transmitted infection [STI]; waterborne ID; foodborne ID; vector-borne ID) were shown to participants in a counterbalanced fashion, to examine the effects of IDT appraisals on how individuals cope with outbreaks. Results support the hypothesized model, in which assessments of predictability, controllability, and responsibility of an IDT situation drive individuals’ affect valence, information seeking, and conative reactions in passive and active ways. Findings further provide insights into what information seeking strategies and IDT coping behaviors individuals prefer based on their differential IDT appraisals, thus suggesting how public health authorities and risk communication professionals can optimally communicate about infectious diseases to help individuals understand these situations and respond appropriately.
... In the social media age, stakeholders play an ever more critical role in creating, sharing and disseminating crisis information, contributing to information flows in a manner historically limited to broadcast media (Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Jin, Fisher Liu, & Austin, 2014). ...
... More importantly, these public comments also exhibit sentiments and attribution level (Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Coombs, 2015). As attribution perception among the public may also exhibit in the form of language use in online comments, we also expect to see the same linguistic abstraction pattern in public comments on the news social media posts: ...
By applying the Linguistic Category Model (LCM) in crisis communication, this study explores the potential of verb tracking on social media to examine how linguistic categories can elucidate the intentional and/or unintentional communication of crisis attribution frames. Through a content analysis, linguistic categories used in both media posts reporting three clusters of crisis and public comments on Facebook were examined. Results indicated that linguistic abstraction in both media post and public comments describing the crisis varied based on crisis cluster, suggesting that the level of linguistic abstraction reflected perceived attribution of responsibility through stability, locus and controllability. Language used to describe preventable crisis tend to be more abstract than those used to describe accidental and victim crisis. Findings of this study empirically tested the integration of LCM in crisis communication and implied potential application of LCM in building automated environmental scanning and crisis prediction systems.
... Information exchange (e.g., to inform others of the number of cases, the development of the outbreak, and prevention methods and to get additional information) is one of the most frequently mentioned reasons participants share COVID-19 related information (similar to the motivations described in De Choudhury et al., 2014;Griffin et al., 1999). Fulfilling emotional needs through social interaction is similar to but not entirely identical with the coping strategy of emotional support seeking in the Integrated Crisis Mapping Model (Brummette & Fussell Sisco, 2015). In addition to what Brummette and Fussell Sisco (2015) described as seeking emotional support, our participants also want to offer emotional support to their social media contacts by sharing information with them, which is similar to what is described in Liu et al. (2019). ...
... Fulfilling emotional needs through social interaction is similar to but not entirely identical with the coping strategy of emotional support seeking in the Integrated Crisis Mapping Model (Brummette & Fussell Sisco, 2015). In addition to what Brummette and Fussell Sisco (2015) described as seeking emotional support, our participants also want to offer emotional support to their social media contacts by sharing information with them, which is similar to what is described in Liu et al. (2019). Resource mobilization is another goal of information sharing. ...
Emerging infectious disease (EID) outbreaks such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic create unknown risks, uncertainty, and anxiety around the world. Accurate and timely information can help the public understand the outbreak and manage their lives. Presented here is a study of how residents of Hubei Province, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, use media for information seeking, scanning, and sharing while under lockdown through in-depth interviews. We find that (1) individuals primarily acquire information through information scanning from official governmental sources, (2) information sharing is more frequent with family members through private channels than with one’s extended social networks and the general public through pubic channels mostly due to concerns with censorship, and (3) individuals’ information need and information use change substantially during different stages of the outbreak. These findings provide insights into how individuals in China use different media for information during an unprecedented public health crisis and make sense of the limited and often confusing and contradictory information that is available to them. Such findings can inform future health communication efforts during EID outbreaks.
... Reference [30] proposed a disaster assessment model by correlating emotional data in voice and text communications with population density and disaster severity. Reference [31] found that during the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, anger was the most frequently expressed emotion on Twitter, followed by fright, sadness, and anxiety. In terms of natural disasters, Reference [21] collected microblogs about the "H7N9" influenza and classified them into different emotion categories using a supervised classification method. ...
... These studies are summarized in Table 1. In terms of emotion types, previous work has mainly focused on general public sentiment (positive, negative, or neural) detection (e.g., Reference [9,10,23,25,28]) or negative emotions after crises (e.g., Reference [29,31,33,37,39]). Most research on fine-grained public emotions is restricted to the assessment of emotion types and rarely explores the relationship between different types of public emotions in crises. ...
Findings on the effect of social status on corruption perception are mixed. To make sense of the mixed results, three studies were conducted to examine whether meritocracy moderates this effect. In Study 1, we measured all variables using a questionnaire‐based correlational design. In the preregistered Study 2, we adopted an experimental design in which we manipulated social status using a false feedback paradigm and measured corruption perception and meritocracy. In Study 3, we manipulated meritocracy using a scrambled sentence task and measured its effect on the relationship between social status and corruption perception. The results consistently demonstrated that meritocracy could moderate the influence of social status on corruption perception. Specifically, social status was negatively associated with corruption perception when meritocracy was weak, whereas the association was not significant when meritocracy was strong. Our results suggest that meritocracy critically affects acknowledgment of the pervasiveness of social injustice and even deters the disadvantaged from fighting against corruption.
... From that time, studies have begun to emerge examining individuals' meaning-making activities in a crisis (i.e. Austin et al., 2012;Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Jin, Pang, & Cameron, 2012). Two of the primary meaning-making activities in a crisis are 1) expressing emotions and 2) crisis coping. ...
... Generally, crisis coping may either be cognitive, comprising efforts to make sense of events, or conative, comprising efforts to pursue a behavioral response. The most common coping strategies identified in the literature include venting, denial, offering support, positive thinking, assigning blame, and adapting Brummette & Sisco, 2015). Under-recognized in public relations literature is resilience, or efforts to "create new normalcies," "affirm identity anchors," and "bounce back" in the face of change (Buzzanell, 2010, p. 9). ...
Despite the promise of social media to engender dialogue, the common approach to studying social media may prioritize monologue, whereby research considers the strategies organizations use in targeting publics, particularly in a crisis. This study uses a mixed-method approach to analyze dialogue in a crisis—semantic network analysis and content analysis. Specifically, this study examines the emotional expression and crisis coping behaviors on social media during two separate terror attacks: the Paris terror attacks in 2015 and the Barcelona terror attacks in 2017. Results demonstrate how publics may be identified and understood through semantic network analysis and content analysis. This study also shows the connection between emotions and coping, expanding the crisis communication literature in public relations, and suggests the need to consider agenda-setting and resilience in crisis communication research. Finally, we discuss this study's implications for assuming a dialogic orientation in public relations.
... Perceived predictability was assessed using five items adapted from previous studies (Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Jin, 2010) on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 "strongly disagree" to 7 "strongly agree. " Participants reported to what extent different agencies would be able to predict what will happen in the given IDT situation, including individuals, federal health organizations (e.g., CDC), state health organizations (e.g., state departments of health), local health organizations (e.g., county departments of health), and medical and health professionals (e.g., physicians, nurses, and/or pharmacists). ...
... Perceived controllability was assessed using five items adapted from previous studies (Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Jin, 2010) on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 "strongly disagree" to 7 "strongly agree. " Participants reported to what extent different entities would be able to influence what will happen in the given IDT situation, including individuals, federal health organizations (e.g., CDC), state health organizations (e.g., state departments of health), local health organizations (e.g., county departments of health), and medical and health professionals (e.g., physicians, nurses, and/or pharmacists). ...
Higher education institutions and their students face a wide range of infectious disease threats (IDTs). However, there is a lack of theory-driven research on how to provide communication for multiple IDTs to motivate protective action taking. To close this gap, this study focuses on college students and two IDT types: respiratory and sexually transmitted infections. We tested an IDT appraisal model with data from an online survey conducted at two U.S. universities with 842 students. Findings indicate that IDT type led to different patterns of threat appraisal and protective action taking intentions. More specifically, participants perceived sexually transmitted threats as significantly more predictable and more controllable than respiratory threats. Participants also had a higher intention to take protective action in response to respiratory threats than sexually-transmitted threats. We also found that external attribution-dependent (EAD) emotions (i.e., anger, sadness, surprise, and confusion) and an internal-attribution-dependent (IAD) emotion (i.e., hope) were sequential mediators
in the relationship between IDT appraisal and protective action taking intentions
for both infectious disease types. Implications for IDT communication research and practice are discussed.
... The model offers refined conceptualisation and measurement of social media influence in the context of organisational crises response. Likewise, [148] and [149] are the two studies that extend the ICM model. Tweets' message according to elements of perceived controllability and predictability with emotions and coping strategies are used in assessing the emotional state of stakeholders [148], though the stakeholders are not categorised according to their social position on media usage. ...
... Likewise, [148] and [149] are the two studies that extend the ICM model. Tweets' message according to elements of perceived controllability and predictability with emotions and coping strategies are used in assessing the emotional state of stakeholders [148], though the stakeholders are not categorised according to their social position on media usage. The [149] study examined online public crisis emotions and coping methods. ...
The involvement application and use of crisis and emergency management and communication are increasing rapidly. This study conducts a systematic literature review to identify the development of theoretical models in the area of social media crisis communication and management. The study aims to review and analyse the relationship of social media-based crisis communication in the context of crisis informatics and its taxonomy and the related crisis communication theoretical models to derive the challenges and limitations. A total of 207 articles were selected for the evaluation based on quality, relevancy, and contribution. The findings revealed that the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) is the most dominant theory, followed by social-mediated crisis communication (SMCC) and integrated crisis mapping (ICM) models. The study identified theories such as the STREMII model, social media crisis management matrix/framework (SMSMF), and an interactive crisis communication model (ICCM) as emerging models. Moreover, the result of the finding shows that stakeholder interaction is an understudied field, while information reliability and processing for decision-making purposes, the wider application of social media sites, privacy issues, and how social media interaction can improve community resilience or build stakeholders relationships remain suitable topics for future research.
... Gault and Sabini (2000) showed that negative affect such as anger was linked to support for punishing the responsible party. Based on data from a social media content analysis, Brummette and Sisco (2015) further demonstrated that stakeholders adopted different coping strategies to fulfill their emotional needs and that instrumental support seeking was the most frequently used strategy. Thus, in our theoretical model, we seek to examine the association between emotions and behavioral intentions and propose H2a-H2c to explore how negative affect influences public behavioral intentions (i.e. ...
... Considering our data were collected three months after the Florida Parkland shooting, we find it intriguing that emotions could have such a powerful and lingering effect on people's behavioral intent. Potentially the strong emotional reactions from each mass shooting cumulatively became part of our collective societal memory (Brummette & Sisco, 2015), which is consistent with the cognitive appraisal theories of emotions (Lazarus, 1991). We encourage more research to investigate the interplay of cognitive judgment and negative affect in a crisis. ...
Situated in the context of crises, the present study examines stakeholders' reactions, including negative affect such as fear and anxiety, relational trust, and public behavioral intentions, toward the National Rifle Association (NRA) of America after the Florida Parkland shooting. To test the proposed theoretical model, we conducted a national survey with 603 NRA stakeholders living in the USA. Using structural equation modeling procedures, we found that a high level of negative affect activated publics' behavioral intentions, while reducing their relational trust toward the NRA. Furthermore, relational trust could lead to information seeking about the NRA as well as accommodative intentions such as cooperating with the NRA to address gun violence issues. This study enriches crisis communication literature and has important implications for crisis managers working at non-profit organizations as well. ARTICLE HISTORY
... As such, the after-feeling of cathartic happiness (Larsen & Stastny, 2011) might be associated with continued viewership activities; this pattern of emotional blast might also be manifested on social media (i.e., use of social media as a coping strategy to regulate fans' emotions; Gaspar, Pedro, Panagiotopoulos, & Seibt, 2016). For example, studies on self-regulation of emotions (Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Gaspar et al., 2016) suggested that individuals desire to express their emotions to others as an attempt to manage their emotional ambivalence (which is created by stressful events). Accordingly, by applying the emotional ambivalence principle included in the opponent-process theory (Aragon, 2017;Larsen & Stastny, 2011;Solomon, 1980), I developed the final two hypotheses: ...
The author explored spectators’ emotional reactions manifested on social media. By using Twitter search application programming interface, 328,000 real-time tweets posted by fans of the Panthers and the Broncos during the Super Bowl 50 game were collected. The lexicon-based text mining approach (a big data analysis in social media analytics) was employed to classify tweets into five different emotions. The findings indicated that spectators expressed positive emotions when their team scored; conversely, they expressed negative emotions when the opposite team scored. Interestingly, spectators became habituated with each subsequent score from either of their preferred teams, which resulted in fewer expressions of emotions. However, when a team scored soon after the opposite team scored, fans expressed a surge of positive or negative emotions, accordingly. The results supported both the theories of affective disposition and opponent-process. Spectators’ simultaneous experience of positive and negative emotions may contribute to fans’ satisfaction, continued patronage, and mental health.
... Supporting such a characterization of a crisis event, empirical studies have shown that fear generally comes forth as a dominant emotion during events which can be described as unpredictable and out of the public control (such as shootings and terror attacks) (Jin 2009). Given the high emotionality experienced collectively in such events, users tend to form emotional support communities (Brummette and Sisco 2015). In fact, Guo (2017) found that social media fostered collective hope and instrumental support within the online community after the 2013 Boston marathon bombing. ...
Abstract In this paper, we present an analysis of the emotion-exchange patterns that arise from Twitter messages sent during emergency events. To this end, we performed a systematic structural analysis of the multiplex communication network that we derived from a data-set including more than 1.9 million tweets that have been sent during five recent shootings and terror events. In order to study the local communication structures that emerge as Twitter users directly exchange emotional messages, we propose the concept of emotion-exchange motifs. Our findings suggest that emotion-exchange motifs which contain reciprocal edges (indicating online conversations) only emerge when users exchange messages that convey anger or fear, either in isolation or in any combination with another emotion. In contrast, the expression of sadness, disgust, surprise, as well as any positive emotion are rather characteristic for emotion-exchange motifs representing one-way communication patterns (instead of online conversations). Among other things, we also found that a higher structural similarity exists between pairs of network layers consisting of one high-arousal emotion and one low-arousal emotion, rather than pairs of network layers belonging to the same arousal dimension.
... For example, Macias, Hilyard, and Freimuth (2009) found that one-third of bloggers expressed discernible emotions when blogging about Hurricane Katrina, including concern, disgust, anger, fear, and hope. Brummette and Sisco (2015) found that during the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, anger was the most frequently expressed emotion on Twitter, followed by fright, sadness, and anxiety. Humor is another important emotion expressed during a crisis. ...
Social media can be used to assess public opinions and emotions during different stages of a crisis. Guided by the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) model, this study examined a systematic sample of 2,881 tweets from a corpus of over one million tweets posted during the initial, maintenance, and resolution stages of the 2015 California measles outbreak. It found that the public showed the greatest interest (as measured by the number of tweets and retweets) in the initial stage of the crisis, but their interest drastically declined afterward. The expression of humor/sarcasm was significantly more frequent in the initial stage than in the maintenance or resolutions stage, while the expression of reassurance increased significantly from the initial, maintenance, and resolution stage. The emotion of alarm/concern was most frequently expressed during the initial stage. For message types, the public were more likely to tweet about their personal opinions and less likely to tweet about resources during the initial stage. These findings allow public health professionals to better design messages in response to the public’s concerns and emotions during public health crises.
... After exposure to a hypothetical terrorist attack, anger and anxiety predicted individuals' intentions to seek information, but fear and anxiety predicted individuals' intentions to take government-recommended protective actions (e.g., evacuation) (Jin et al., 2016). Another study found that individuals most frequently displayed anger on social media, followed by fright, sadness and anxiety in the context of a repeat school shooting (Brummette & Sisco, 2015). ...
Providing information to help individuals cope physically and psychologically with a disaster is critical in crisis communication. However, how individuals cope is relatively understudied. In particular, researchers have examined how people emotionally cope during different types of crises, but not in a natural disaster context and not religiosity. Yet, religiosity can be important during disasters, given that about 89% of adults in the United States believe in God (Pew Research Center, 2014). Through ten focus groups (N = 77) and a survey (N = 1,484), this study examines how residents of the Southeast United States cope in response to tornadoes. Findings indicate that participants experience anxiety and fear during a tornado, but fear and hope trigger physical action taking (e.g., sheltering in place or collecting supplies). Religiosity helped participants interpret, understand, and respond to tornado threat messages. Focus group participants shared that praying during a tornado provides comfort and hope and that some participants often pray after taking other actions like sheltering in place. Religiosity also helped focus group participants make sense of tornadoes after they occurred. In the survey, praying during a tornado was the third most common action that participants took first in response to tornado threat messages. Prayer during a tornado does not significantly predict action taking. Religiosity significantly predicts physical action taking.
... Following Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) line of reasoning, to cope with the negative emotions related to disasters, publics may vent disaster-related emotions on social media platforms (Choi & Lin, 2009;Vignal Lambret & Barki, 2018). Indeed, Brummette and Sisco (2015) found that people vented emotions on Twitter to cope with emotions experienced in uncontrollable crises. ...
There has been a growing body of research regarding how organizations and general publics communicate on social media during crises. Integrating the uses and gratifications perspective, the social‐mediated crisis communication model, and the framing approach, our study offers a consolidated framework explaining how and why motivated social media publics communicate during crises. Namely, we examined whether and how influentials and followers employed different message functions through communicative devices including frames and styles. A content analysis was conducted on 800 tweets sampled from influentials and followers discussing the 2017 Ariana Grande concert bombing disaster. Our results (N = 800) suggested that influentials and followers adopted distinct communicative functions on social media during the disaster. Influentials engaged in information sharing and support exchange, whereas followers engaged in opinion expression and emotional coping. Influentials and followers also adopted specific frames and styles to achieve these communicative functions. Our findings can help crisis communicators understand the needs, concerns, and communication features of different publics and construct effective messages to reach them.
... The study employed content analysis to examine tweet disseminated by online publics upon receiving the news that the search for MH370 would be suspended. Twitter was selected because, among the various social media tools, it is a popular and fast growing social medium that offers real-time information (Brummette & Sisco, 2015). In times of crises, this social media platform has also been recognized as a key communication channel used to reach audiences in need of help during emergencies (Freberg, Saling, Vidoloff, & Eosco, 2013). ...
Considered one of the deadliest incidents in the history of aviation crises and labelled a “continuing mystery,” the ongoing search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 offers no closure. With endless media attention, and negative reactions of stakeholders to every decision made by the airline, this study investigates the types of emotions found in social media posted by publics to the MH370 search suspension announcement. It content analyzed 5,062 real-time tweet messages guided by the revised integrated crisis mapping model. Our findings indicated that, in addition to the four original emotions posited, there was a fifth emotion because of the long-drawn crisis and only two dominant emotions were similar to the model. A redrawn version to better encapsulate all the emotions is offered for one quadrant in the model. Implications for both crisis communication scholarship and the importance of social listening for organizations are discussed.
... Kim et al., 2016). Past research shows that people are likely to pay attention to crisis communication via social media more than they do via traditional media because social media provide not only real-time information but also social cues, such as user comments (Brummette & Fussell, 2015;Utz, Schultz, & Glocka, 2013). Hence the sentiment analysis of crisis communication on social media could provide a social cue for gauging public attitudes on the issue (J. ...
This study explores the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 explosion crisis by analyzing posts on Twitter in three nations: the United States, Australia, and South Korea. Using the perspectives of generic frames, issue-specific frames, cross-national frames, and user sentiment on Twitter, this study analyzes 600 posts (200 from each nation). Results reveal that Twitter posts frequently framed the crisis using attribution, morality, and conflict frames. Posts about the explosion were more professional frame oriented than national frame oriented. Negative sentiment was dominant in Twitter posts about the explosion. Morality, corporate breakdown, and customer concerns were highly associated with negative sentiment. The results demonstrate how global users respond to a corporate crisis. Study implications and suggestions are discussed.
... On the other hand, regretting differs from discrediting and deriding as customers focus mainly on communicating emotions of regret for choosing a specific provider. Emotional expressions are common in the context of tourism and hospitality (Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Jiang et al., 2010;Lee et al., 2017). However, prior research suggests that negative emotional reviews decrease the degree of the helpfulness of these reviews (Ladhari, 2007;Ostbo, 2016;Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2013). ...
Customer Engagement Behavior (CEB) impacts customers' perceptions and experiences,
and the performance of organizations. As hospitality and tourism offerings are particularly difficult to evaluate before actual consumption, customers depend on online reviews as the main source of information about a firm's offerings. In this context, negative CEB is especially contagious in online networks, with financial and reputational repercussions for organizations. This chapter outlines six forms of negative CEB identified in online reviewing platforms and insight into the interplay between the intensity of forms and valence of reviews. Theoretically, this chapter reveals empirical research on negative CEB and provides a nuanced view of its forms with additional insights about its intensity levels. Practically, this chapter addresses a key challenge for tourism and hospitality service providers in managing negative CEB when it occurs and offering recommendations to manage different forms of negative CEB.
... Of note, how people perceive organizational crisis responsibility is a key predictor of their crisis emotions; additionally, people's crisis emotions can act as mediators in the relationship between their perceived organizational crisis responsibility and behavioral intentions (Choi & Lin, 2009;Coombs & Holladay, 2007;Kim & Niederdeppe, 2016). Through understanding people's emotions, organizations can select the most appropriate crisis response strategies (Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Jin et al., 2010Jin et al., , 2012. Minimal research has examined how crisis narratives, as an organizational message strategy, affect people's emotional responses to crises. ...
During public health crises like infectious disease outbreaks, news media and governments are responsible for informing the public about how to protect themselves. A large body of health communication research finds that persuasive narratives motivate protective behaviors, such as intentions to vaccinate. In their seminal book on crisis narratives, Seeger and Sellnow (Narratives of crisis: Telling stories of ruin and renewal. Stanford University) theorized five narrative types: blame, renewal, victim, hero, and memorial. In this study, we tested how the public responds to crisis narratives about a hypothetical infectious disease crisis, modeled after narratives emerging from the 2014–2016 Ebola pandemic, through an online experiment with a U.S. adult sample (N = 1050). Findings showcase which crisis narratives positively affect public protective behaviors as well as emotional responses, assessments of information credibility, and attributions of crisis responsibility.
50 free preprints available until they run out: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/WKUWGHVTWTU629PQHRQZ/full?target=10.1080/00909882.2020.1756377
... Twitter, blame a little before bedtime (Ampere, female aged 23) From our findings, even though respondents mentioned about expressing their thoughts, opinions and information, Twitter was not mainly used for expressing opinions, it is geared towards what respondents called 'Emotional venting' as the main usage, specifically negative emotions. This use of social media was also discovered in a previous study of Twitter (Brummette & Sisco, 2015). Several respondents used the phrases "venting my mood", "space to blame" and "emotional venting". ...
Takaful or Islamic Insurance has emerged as a distinguishable segment of Islamic Financial Products (IFPs) by providing Shariah compliant alternative to conventional counterpart for risk protection. For its critical connection with religion this paper is interested to analyze how the demand is affected through the influence of religion on human conduct. Precisely this study considers religiosity - a multidimensional construct which combines different facets of religious impacts on individuals’ deportment and its impact on takaful participation and demand. To draw a causal inference, the study uses data of 15 (fifteen) years from 17 (seventeen) mostly Muslim majority countries. In a cross country setting and employing the static panel data model the study finds significant impact of religion in creating takaful demand. The analysis reveals
that stronger the degree of religiosity higher will be the demand for takaful. This work expands the religiosity study allowing for Muslim religiosity which is limited in the existing research stream. Subsequently, the study findings contribute to stakeholders’ decision and policy making to stimulate the development of the takaful sector.
... Previous studies have revealed that the publics' likelihoods of seeking information via social media has increased rather than using traditional media due to the timely nature of communication messages and users' posts (Brummette & Fussell, 2015;Utz et al., 2013). Due to the timeliness and easy accessibility of users' comments, the publics have become vital participants that seek to be involved, usually in a period of emergency, as well as a platform for citizens to challenge authorities' decisions (Palttala & Vos, 60 ANSAH 2011). ...
The paper explored how the Ministry of Information (M.O.I.), the official mouthpiece of the government of Ghana, interacted with citizens during the COVID-19 outbreak within the context of crisis communication as a tool for authority-citizen engagement on Facebook. Content analysis of COVID-19 comments on the Ministry of Information’s official Facebook page showed higher participation in the discussion from citizens. However, authorities only provided information by being inactive participants in the interaction. The dominant issues focused on Ghanaian authorities and their actions, the course of events surrounding the pandemic, infected cases and deaths, and Ghana’s recovery efforts. The active publics provided information, asked and answered questions, and expressed their opinions as the discussions were ongoing. The comments portrayed negative, positive, and neutral tones. The paper also revealed diverse challenges that are likely to hinder crisis communication during the pandemic, from the inflexibility of action, quality of information, and disparity of knowledge.
... Since the proposition of ICM, several scholars have conducted research into understanding the linkages between these emotions, crisis communication strategy (Jin, 2009;Vercic et al., 2019), coping strategy (Brummette & Sisco, 2014), crisis response (Kim & Cameron, 2011), and even scale development to measure and map emotional responses towards crises (Jin, Liu, Anagondahalli, & Austin, 2014;Malinen et al., 2019). Notably, Jin, et. ...
This study examined the influence of a crisis on relational perceptions and the role of an empathetic response from stakeholders by investigating students’ perceptions of their relationship with a university following an on‐campus shooting. Findings show that despite the generally positive relationship, the university maintains with its students, the crisis had a negative impact on the students’ perceptions of their relationship with the university. Furthermore, results show how emotions, especially empathy, about an organization in a crisis situation can influence stakeholder relationships. This research helps provide nuance to the extant scholarship on crisis and emotions by introducing stakeholder empathy as a theoretical construct. Results also demonstrate that crisis managers who invest in relationship building before a crisis may elicit empathy more than blame in a crisis and may emerge with less relational damage.
... Yapılan analizlerde problem odaklı yaklaşımın kendine güvenli ve iyimser yaklaşımla; duygu odaklı yaklaşımın sosyal destek arama, çaresiz ve boyun eğici yaklaşımla açıklanabildiği gösterilmiştir (32). İnsanlar, kontrol edebileceklerini düşündükleri stres kaynaklarına problem-odaklı yaklaşırken; kontrolün kendi ellerinde olmadığını düşündüğü veya belirsizlik durumlarında duyguodaklı başa çıkma stratejilerini uygulamaya yönelimli olmaktadırlar (33). Salgın hastalıkların küresel anlamda yarattığı belirsizlik durumunda kişiler, başa çıkma stratejileri doğrultusunda davranış sergilemektedir (34,35 (32). ...
INTRODUCTION[|]This study aims at investigating the psychological factors that may influence the implementation of protective behaviors of Turkish people against the novel coronavirus pandemic. For this purpose, the relationship between the implementation of the protective behaviors and risk perception, risk taking behaviors, positive and negative affect and coping strategies were examined. [¤]METHODS[|]Data collection tools were The Protective Behavior Implementation Scale, The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, The Ways of Coping with Stress Scale and The Sensation Seeking-Risk Taking Scale. 364 of the participants were female and 193 were male. The age range was 20-64 and the mean age was 34.69. [¤]RESULTS[|]The hierarchical regression analysis showed that a positive relationship between age, sex and protective behaviors exists. Another positive relationship was found between protective behaviors, risk perception and positive affect. Moreover, a negative relationship was present between submissive coping and protective behaviors. [¤]DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION[|]Psychological factors are influential on the implementation of the protective behaviors against the coronavirus. As the perceived risk regarding the disease increases, protective behaviors are elevated. Else, the increasement in the protective behaviors are related to the positive affect. People who carry out protective behaviors are observed not to be using submissive coping. This may be related to the self-control perception. In addition to that, increased age is associated with applying more protective behaviors and women are found to be more likely to use protective behaviors than men. The study is important as it investigated the impact of psychological factors on cultural settings.[¤]
... Nevertheless, constant human monitoring of social media to detect negative criticism is difficult if not impossible due to staff and time restrictions [18]. Technically supported monitoring of social media is possible in real-time, but it only serves to analyze the continuous emergence of new content and not to warn against firestorms [19,20]. However, companies can use prevention strategies more effectively if they detect signals of a potential firestorm in time. ...
Online firestorms pose a serious threat to companies and cause spontaneous information asymmetry between companies and social media users, which is part of the principal-agent theory. Corporate crisis management has already developed strategies to deal with firestorms, but these strategies are more effective if the company identifies a firestorm at an early stage. Therefore, we first identify literature-based characteristics of firestorms and quantify these using data-driven features in a multiple-case study approach based on Twitter data. Secondly, we identify per case the beginning of the firestorm and days with the least fluctuation in the number of posts as reference days. Finally, we compare the features between the starting points and the reference days to determine which features are significantly different. We could identify 24 features that change significantly at the beginning of a firestorm. This enables us to determine which features a company must pay particular attention to in order to detect a firestorm at an early stage. Likewise, we discuss these features in the context of the principal-agent theory with the use of social synchrony and crowd psychology to show how these features change information diffusion and contribute to information asymmetry.
... En el campo de la comunicación turística, Facebook ha demostrado tener una gran fortaleza ya que su uso se ha comprobado en cada una de las fases de la planificación del viaje, por lo que, con un discurso coherente, Facebook puede ayudar a los destinos a generar una mejor imagen de marca (Rodríguez, Llorente y García, 2012). Por su parte, Twitter destaca como un medio particularmente idóneo para la comunicación de las crisis (Brummette y Sisco, 2015) por sus características y singularidades. Si bien en los últimos años ha registrado algún descenso, esta red, con 330 millones de usuarios activos, sigue siendo uno de los medios sociales más influyentes y lucha por marcar tendencias (Fernández, 2019). ...
... Further, H9 and H10 were partially supported. Previous studies have found that people are more likely to produce perceptive and cognitive responses when subjected to we media that involve a crisis (Brummette and Fussell Sisco 2015). However, the primary perceptive reactions generated by type 1 information processing and secondary cognitive reactions generated by type 2 information processing may also have an indirect effect on dissemination behaviours through positive or negative emotional reactions (Evans 2003;Evans and Curtis-Holmes 2005;Stanovich and Toplak 2012). ...
Individuals’ psychological processes during emergencies are critical to the understanding of social media user reactions. However, previous studies have paid little attention to the influence of psychological processes on information dissemination behaviours. To provide authorities with a better understanding of dissemination behaviours from the perspective of psychological language use, we used the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) and dual-process models to analyze the effect of words expressing severity and susceptibility on the dissemination behaviours of Weibo users during the avian influenza epidemic. We also explored the mediating effects of emotional responses on the relationship between cognitive responses and dissemination behaviours. The results show that words expressing severity and susceptibility significantly affected the cognitive and emotional responses of users. Weibo user perception and cognition, positive and negative emotions significantly and positively affected their dissemination behaviours. Positive and negative emotions played a partial mediating role in perception responses, cognitive responses, and dissemination behaviours. These findings may assist governments or emergency management departments to effectively control and guide public opinion.
... It has been used to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze a variety of organizations in differing crises. For example, the model has been applied to non-profit organizations (e.g., Brummette & Sisco, 2015;Cooley & Jones, 2013;Sisco, 2012b), for-profit organizations (e.g., Jeong, 2009), political groups (e.g., Sisco, 2012a), and social media (e.g., Ki & Nekmat, 2014), among others. Within sport research, use of the SCCT is gaining traction (e.g., Brown, 2015;Brown-Devlin, 2018;Coombs, 2018;DiSanza, Hartman, Legge, & Gershberg, 2018;Harker, 2018;Jordan & Smith, 2013;Sherrill, 2018) and approaches focus on a wide variety of angles that span from experimental to rhetorical. ...
On Sunday, August 26, 2018 an eSport gamer killed two competitors and injured 10 others in Jacksonville, FL. at the Madden 19 Southeast Qualifier, a competition sanctioned by the Madden Championship Series. The shooting, live-streamed to thousands of fans watching on Twitch, stands as the first mass shooting to occur at a professional sporting event. Due to the changing complexity of sports crises, and the ever-increasing power of sport organizations, the authors of this paper argue that sport communication practitioners and managers need explicit guidance for how to act in crisis situations, especially as research shows that sport crisis managers are overwhelmingly underprepared. The authors, therefore, propose a visual step-by-step model based off of Coombs’s (2007b) Situational Crisis Communication Theory that lowers barriers to entry for sport communication practitioners to effectively implement a crisis response even when they have little knowledge of the theory.
Purpose
Defending their employer on LinkedIn or attacking their organization on Twitter: a ubiquitous social-mediated environment allows employees of crisis-stricken organizations to reach out to a mass audience with only a few keystrokes. But is such employee social-mediated crisis communication an opportunity or a threat to their organizations? By developing the perspective of employees in contrast to consumers, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of employee social-mediated crisis communication on organizational reputation.
Design/methodology/approach
An online survey experiment was conducted among 386 participants constituting the publics of an organization.
Findings
The findings demonstrate the importance of moderating effects of message framing (advocacy vs adversary) and medium (blog vs microblog). They show that in comparison to consumers, employees attacking their organization on social media, particularly via media such as blog, cause disproportionally more damage to organizational reputation.
Research limitations/implications
While the significant effects of employees’ adversary message might make them a threat for organizations, it is argued that the fact that employees are equally as effective as advocates for their organizations as consumers also constitutes an opportunity.
Practical implications
Organizations need to be cognizant of the threats posed by employees’ crisis communication as well as aim to reap opportunities offered by these credible communicators by considering strategies such as authentically integrating employees in the official crisis communication response.
Originality/value
By comparing the role of the two groups of stakeholders (employees vs consumers) in crisis communication, the study contributes to an important audience-centered perspective.
The use of social media during crises has been explored in a variety of natural and man-made crisis situations. Yet, most of these studies have focused exclusively on the communication strategies and messages sent by crisis responders. Surprisingly little research has been done on how crisis publics (i.e., those people interested in or affected by the crisis) use social media during such events. Our article addresses this gap in the context of citizens’ Twitter use during the 2011 riots in the UK. Focusing on communications with and about police forces in two cities, we analyzed 5984 citizen tweets collected during the event for content and sentiment. Comparing the two cases, our findings suggest that citizens’ Twitter communication follows a general logic of concerns, but can also be influenced very easily by single, non-crisis related events such as perceived missteps in a police force's Twitter communication. Our study provides insights into citizens’ concerns and communication patterns during crises adding to our knowledge about the dynamics of citizens’ use of social media in such times. It further highlights the fragmentation in Twitter audiences especially in later stages of the crisis. These observations can be utilized by police forces to help determine the appropriate organizational responses that facilitate coping across various stages of crisis events. In addition, they illustrate limitations in current theoretical understandings of crisis response strategies, adding the requirement for adaptivity, flexibility and ambiguity in organizational responses to address the observed plurivocality of crisis audiences.
This study analyzes explicit pieces of advice for effective social media crisis communication given by researchers in various subdisciplines of strategic communication. The themes are identified by a systematic content analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers (n = 104) published between 2004 and 2017. Five overall thematic “lessons” are identified and critically discussed. These are that effective social media crisis communication is about: (1) exploiting social media’s potential to create dialogue and to choose the right message, source and timing; (2) performing precrisis work and developing an understanding of the social media logic; (3) using social media monitoring; (4) continuing to prioritize traditional media in crisis situations; and finally, (5) just using social media in strategic crisis communication. These guidelines mainly emerged from quantitative research conducted in the context of the United Stated and on Twitter. There is need for more research focusing on other platforms and other empirical material. There is also a future need for an in-depth methodological discussion of how to further bridge the gap between research and practice on a global scale, and how to develop more evidence-based recommendations for strategic crisis communication practitioners.
The effect of emotional experience on cognitive processes is an under-explored phenomenon in crisis communication research, despite indications of the increasing importance of emotion-based communication in the digital era. Emerging evidence indicates that the emotional experiences of publics play a critical role during organizational crises and determine the degree to which organizations are able to successfully devise communications that help them deal with such crises. Yet no comprehensive, theoretically sound model exists for analyzing how emotions influence the cognitive processing of crisis information. Our study proposes just such a model, capable of describing how cognition and emotion, separately or interactively, influence the publics’ processing of crisis information and consequently their attitudes and behaviors. Our model describes how emotional variables determine whether the publics take a cognition-oriented approach or an emotion-oriented approach to information processing and subsequent formation of interpretations, evaluations, and judgments directed toward organizations. Moreover, our model explains how an emotion-to-cognition assessment of publics’ attitudes is possible and makes a case for how it is critical for predicting and influencing the publics’ behavior during organizational crises. The hope is that this model will aid practitioners and academics in understanding why the publics’ emotions matter during crisis communication as well as how to craft more effective communication strategies as a result. Finally, several avenues for future research are suggested in order to test the validity of our conceptual model in different contexts.
To successfully manage a crisis in sports, it is necessary to examine the public’s emotions and other emotion-related responses. Without this knowledge, an organization will likely be disconnected from the needs of the public. Inspired by the key constructs in the integrated crisis mapping model, this study examined emotion, coping, and responsibility attribution through a content analysis of tweets during the Larry Nassar scandal involving Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics. This study analyzed a sample of 3,088 tweets generated by the public several days following the sentencing of Larry Nassar. The findings had both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, the findings provided an extension of emotions examined and suggested ways in which the model could be expanded to accommodate varied crisis situations. Furthermore, the study revealed important findings regarding levels of attributions and the relationship of the public’s emotions and attribution of responsibilities. On a practical level, the findings offered tangible suggestions for sports communication managers when developing appropriate strategies and tactics considering public sentiments such as emotions, coping strategies, and attributions on social media.
The aim of this study is to analyse the reach of existing investigation on social media and its relation to companies throughout 2014–2015. To achieve the proposed, the study proceeds in classifying such information and identifying methods to study social media and it's relation with different marketing associated topics. The research uses a mapping process that uses the database generated from references of Web of Science's publications during 2014–2015, amounting to 185 articles. The results found that the initial method is a descriptive analysis on the usage of social media as a tool for marketing. Nevertheless, during the past years studies have proposed that social media is becoming more an instrument for marketing and business management.
The lack of information from the organizations involved in a crisis situation and the high level of uncertainty may result in setting an emotional tone on social media and even in bringing radical political and social changes. Such an example is the Colectiv crisis in Romania. The fire, caused by a fireworks display, broke out at the Colectiv nightclub where almost 300 people were attending the “Goodbye to Gravity” band concert. 27 people died that night and the death toll reached 63 in December. This tragedy led to an online and offline civic uprising, Romanian citizens protesting against a corrupted political system. The scope of this study is to examine the emotion-filled dialogue on Twitter and to determine the evolution of coping strategies and collective action frames throughout this crisis which resulted in a social and political reform in Romania.
This study analyzes how the national tourism organizations (NTOs) of Spain and Italy managed their crisis communication to deal with Covid-19. The study examines the messages published by the Twitter accounts of the NTOs from the beginning or the detection of the first patient until one month after the official declaration of the pandemic by the World Health Organization. The results reveal two different ways of managing crisis communications in the face of Covid-19, both in the treatment of the topics and in the timing of publication, at the same time generating different reactions and engagement among users. The Agenzia Nazionale Italiana del Turismo was faster and more active in the first moments of the health crisis compared with the Oficina de Turismo de España. This study can contribute to the development of communication strategies on social media by NTOs during different periods of such crises as well as communication actions to enhance the touristic image of their destinations.
This paper examines how online expressions about Dr Li Wenliang became a public opinion incident in China and how the regime adjusted its internet censorship and emotional governance. We find that public perception of Li changed from a rumormonger to a whistleblower, a victim of structural causes, and a martyr of the nation, with collective emotions shifting from feelings of uncertainty to outrage, panic, and grief. Reassured by the state's crisis management and by positive stories of solidarity and resilience, the public then moved to a xenophobic discourse of crisis nationalism with feelings of hope, vindication, and pride. Meanwhile, public trust in the state grew as the regime delegated responsibility to local governments and perpetuated itself as a paternalistic, responsive, and effective leader through an authoritarian participatory propaganda. We argue that the pandemic spawned an emerging crisis nationalism that fed into the regime's crisis management and propaganda.
Concerns over the resilience of individuals within communities impacted by extreme weather events have heightened in recent years due to the increasing frequency and intensity of these events. Individuals’ participation in communicative activities is an integral part of how they prepare for and respond to natural disasters. This study focuses on how individuals express resilience in social media posts from Twitter before, during, and after a regional flooding event in Colorado in 2013 (N = 210,303). Findings show that both negative and positive emotional responses spike at the start of the event, with positive emotions remaining high in the weeks following the event. Uses of language related to social connections, as well as references to home and work, increased during and after the event. Tweets used pronouns focused on the self during the event but shifted to pronouns focused on the collective after the event. This study points the importance of language for understanding the lasting impact extreme weather events can have on individuals, as well as when and how to reach individuals with information about recovery. The increased focus on collective language after the event provides an opportunity for calls to action in collecting and distributing shared resources.
Katy Jaekel, PhD is an Assistant Professor in Higher Education and a faculty associate for the Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Northern Illinois University. Jaekel’s research centers on the experiences of queer and trans college students as well as teaching and learning in higher education. Sam Glaab‐Lanigan, MSEd earned a graduate degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs from Northern Illinois University in 2020. She worked at the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center at Northern Illinois University as the Graduate Research Assistant for LGBTQ+ programs. Sam has worked throughout her college career to grow into a social justice advocate. Luz Rodriguez, MSEd earned a graduate degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs from Northern Illinois University in 2020. Her work centered on student organization and involvement in higher education. She believes that education should be equitable and accessible to all students and wants to continue advocating for change and representation of underrepresented students at PWIs. In her 20 years as a higher education professional, Tara M. Hart, EdD has served in the areas of admissions, residence life, student involvement, student conduct, student transition, student retention, and administrative leadership. Hart’s background includes dedicated service at both private and public institutions in the states of Nebraska, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. She began utilizing social media in 2006 when her Greek Life President showed her this “Facebook thing” in which she realized how two personas could exist for someone – physically and digitally. Tara has continued to stay current with her students by expanding her social media knowledge and utilization umbrella to Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok.
This study investigated the relationship between stakeholder enacted crisis communication and organizational crisis response. Through textual analysis, the reputation repair strategies that head coach Urban Meyer utilized in his four public statements regarding the Zach Smith scandal were identified. Next, 10,000 tweets from Ohio-based stakeholders were content analyzed to examine the extent to which stakeholders mirror the selected strategies employed by an individual enveloped in a crisis and amplify them through their own social media networks. Results showed that stakeholders engaged in three primary behaviors: rallying together by using the ingratiation and reminder strategies; mirroring some of Meyer’s official strategies; and utilizing their own strategies to attribute blame to other, external parties. Implications regarding how stakeholders utilize Twitter, itself, during a crisis were also proffered.
Social media constitutes a pervasive communication media that has had a prominent role during global crises. While crisis communication research suggests that individuals use social media differently during a crisis, little is known about what forms of engagement behavior may emerge and what drivers may lead to different forms of social media users’ engagement behavior toward a global crisis. This study uses netnography and in-depth interviews to explore social media users’ behavioral manifestations toward the COVID-19 crisis; thereby, we identify nine forms and six drivers and develop a framework of relationships between these forms and drivers. Those findings provide a better understanding of social media engagement toward the crisis from individual users’ perspectives, which helps commercial and non-commercial marketers to determine the users’ sentiments and reactions reflected in their engagement behaviors, hence, communicate more effectively and in a more engaging way during and beyond a global crisis.
This study examines the patterns and trends of social media-related public relations research published in 14 journals from 2006 to 2020. It analyzes the theoretical trends (i.e., research topics, theories and theoretical models, hypotheses, and research questions), methodological trends (i.e., types of sample, sampling methods, and research methods), and social media platforms used in 445 published journal articles. The findings are compared with the publication trends of social media-related public relations articles by journals in interdisci-plinary areas, which include communication, public relations, and new media. The results reveal the trends of public relations research across three stages of social media development. In addition, this study provides directions for future public relations research involving social media and calls for more studies on fake news on social media, artificial intelligence on social media apps, and social media influencers. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are also discussed.
During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, people have, in many cases, acquired information primarily from social media. Users’ need to stay informed and the intensive circulation of news has led to the spread of misinformation. As they have engaged in news, it has raised the question of trust. This study provides a model on how news trust can be explained through a need for cognition and news engagement. Accordingly, 433 Slovenian social media users participated in our survey. Structural equation modeling revealed that (1) the lower the need for cognition and the more prior knowledge about COVID-19 users have, the more they believe that social media news comprises all facts about the disease; (2) the more users believe that news comprises all essential facts, the more they trust that the news depicts the actual situation about COVID-19 accurately; (3) the more users are interested in engaging with social media news, the more they trust that the actual situation about COVID-19 is depicted accurately. These findings may help authorities to frame messages about COVID-19 effectively. We suggest investing more effort in disseminating new scientific evidence about the disease to contribute to the accurate shaping of knowledge about COVID-19 among social media users.
During Summer 2020, the murder of George Floyd sparked worldwide protests for racial justice, as collective voices insisted that organizations express a commitment to racial equity. Following a disappointing response from the National Football League (NFL), NFL social media employees and prominent athletes released a video on their own demanding organizational action and a statement from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Utilizing stakeholder theory and literature on employee voicing, this manuscript analyzes this collective voicing from NFL internal stakeholders, arguing that social media has prompted an initial, small movement toward increased democratization in sport, as athletes have realized the power afforded to them by their vast, social networks to activate the external stakeholders who follow them (i.e., fans) and sway organizational decision-making. Implications for public relations practitioners and crisis communication scholarship are proffered.
Since the 1990s, the concept of emotional intelligence has garnered growing popular and scholarly attention in the past several decades. Emotional intelligence is generally defined as one’s ability to recognize one’s own emotions, regulate them, recognize others’ emotions, and manage social relationships and is proposed to yield various desirable outcomes for organizations. This study provides a critical and comprehensive review of empirical studies on the role of emotional intelligence in various domains of public relations practice. Findings reveal that existing research has focused mostly on emotional intelligence as a competency vital to effective leadership and employee communication in organizations. Considerable research has also examined emotional intelligence as a necessity for effective crisis management and communication. This study calls for investigating the role of emotional intelligence in different areas of public relations such as media relations and community relations, for improved measurement and methodological pluralism in future research, for EI-based training for future public relations leaders, and for an EI model of professionalism in public relations education.
The article focuses on how the analysis of stakeholders’ emotions online can help companies facing a social media crisis determine the response strategy that will best minimize the reputational threat. The article indeed questions the relevance of classical crisis management theory to an online environment. Results show that social media have increased the unpredictability of corporate crises. Consequently, on social media, crises cannot be addressed with the methods that have prevailed so far. Rather, incorporating emotion-based analysis in six case studies showed how crisis analysis, and the subsequent response strategy, could be fine-tuned. The article builds on recent literature to develop a new analytical framework for response strategies and a model for crisis resolution—the social media crisis management matrix.
The deontological philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) provides a powerful framework for the analysis of ethical dilemmas. Kant's philosophy is discussed and applied to what this research poses as the "practical model for ethical decision making" (see Figure 1). This Kantian model establishes an ethical consideration triangle and incorporates symmetrical communication. The issues management of 2 global organizations was used as an empirical test of the model and to refine it for practical implementation. I argue that rigorous analysis of ethical decisions and symmetrical communication result in ethical issues management.
New communications media have had a huge impact on the practice of public
relations since the first weblogs, or blogs, appeared more than a dozen years
ago. Since then these new communications media have developed into a
number of different forms including text, images, audio and video through the
development of forums, message boards, photo sharing, podcasts RSS (really
simple syndication), search engine marketing, video sharing, Wikis, social
networks, professional networks and micro-blogging sites.
Although social and other new communications media are changing the way
people and organizations communicate few define social media the same way.
Mark Dykeman (2008) says, “Social media are the means for any person to:
publish digital creative content; provide and obtain real-time feedback via online
discussions, commentary and evaluations; and incorporate changes or
corrections to the original content” (p. 1). For example, Joe Marchese (2007)
suggests the difference between traditional media such as newspapers,
magazines, radio-television and social media “is not the media itself, but the
system of discovery, distribution, consumption and conversation surrounding the
media.” Even though both social and traditional media have the ability to reach
small or large audiences, production costs usually are large for what has become
a small number of traditional media outlets while social media technologies
basically give anyone with access to a computer the ability to reach a potentially
global audience at little or no cost.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to provide a rationale and framework for examining stakeholder reactions to crisis communication messages in various social media channels. Stakeholders can become crisis communications by entering various sub-arenas of the larger rhetorical arena. The concept of sub-arena is presented and a case analysis used to illustrate the application and value of examining stakeholder crisis communicators during a crisis.
Design/methodology/approach
– Content analysis was used to evaluate publicly available social media messages posted on the Livestrong blog and the Huffington Post online news site.
Findings
– The paper demonstrates that monitoring reactions of stakeholders can reveal how individuals can act as crisis communications in social media messages can serve as barometers the effectiveness of an organization's crisis response. The importance of examining multiple sub-arenas is considered due to the influence of supportive stakeholders in organizational social media.
Research limitations/implications
– Only two sub-arenas were analyzed using one crisis response during a crisis that extended over a number of months.
Practical implications
– The paper includes implications for the examination of social media messages from supportive stakeholder and neutral sub-arenas. The results provide indicators of the effectiveness of an organization's crisis response and how stakeholder messages in social media may contribute to or undermine the crisis response.
Originality/value
– This paper demonstrates the value of monitoring social media comments to gauge reactions to organizational crisis responses and demonstrates how stakeholders can function as informal crisis managers. It also begins the discussion of the value and conceptualization of sub-arenas.
Recent studies have shown a positive link between frequency of social media use and political participation. However, there has been no clear elaboration of how using social media translates into increased political activity. The current study examines three explanations for this relationship in the context of citizens’ protest behavior: information (social media as a source for news), opinion expression (using social media to express political opinions), and activism (joining causes and finding mobilizing information through social media). To test these relationships, the study uses survey data collected in Chile in 2011, amid massive demonstrations demanding wholesale changes in education and energy policy. Findings suggest that using social media for opinion expression and activism mediates the relationship between overall social media use and protest behavior. These findings deepen our knowledge of the uses and effects of social media and provide new evidence on the role of digital platforms as facilitators of direct political action.
Social media sites such as Twitter provide organizations with the ability to interact directly with publics. Previous research has suggested that web-based relationship building is dependent on the level of organizational interactivity with web technology, or how the organization uses the technology to engage with its publics. This study tested if levels of organizational Twitter interactivity affected the quality of organization–public relationships. Findings suggest that an organization's level of Twitter interactivity influences relationship quality.
To better understand not only the minds, but also the hearts of key publics, we have developed a more systemic approach to understand the responses of audiences in crisis situations. The Integrated Crisis Mapping (ICM) model is based on a publics-based, emotion-driven perspective where the publics' responses to different crises are mapped on 2 continua, the organization's engagement in the crisis and primary publics' coping strategy. This multistage testing found evidence that anxiety was the default emotion that publics felt in crises. The subsequent emotions felt by the publics varied in different quadrants involving different crisis types. As far as coping strategies were concerned, conative coping was more evident than cognitive coping across the 4 quadrants. Evidence also suggested strong merit that conative coping was the external manifestation of the internal cognitive processing that had taken place. Cognitive coping was thus the antecedent of conative coping. Although both the publics and the organizations agreed that the crises were relevant to the organizations' goals, they differed on who should assume more responsibility. The findings, although still very much exploratory, suggest theoretical rigor in the model, with room for further refinements to generate what Yin (200350.
Yin , R. K. ( 2003 ). Case study research (3rd ed.) . Thousand Oaks , CA : Sage . View all references) termed “analytic generalization” (p. 33) for the ICM model.
In content analysis and similar methods, data are typically generated by trained human observers who record or transcribe textual, pictorial, or audible matter in terms suitable for analysis. Conclusions from such data can be trusted only after demonstrating their reliability. Unfortunately, the content analysis literature is full of proposals for so-called reliability coefficients, leaving investigators easily confused, not knowing which to choose. After describing the criteria for a good measure of reliability, we propose Krippendorff's alpha as the standard reliability measure. It is general in that it can be used regardless of the number of observers, levels of measurement, sample sizes, and presence or absence of missing data. To facilitate the adoption of this recommendation, we describe a freely available macro written for SPSS and SAS to calculate Krippendorff's alpha and illustrate its use with a simple example.
Crisis managers benefit from understanding how crisis communication can be used to protect reputational assets during a crisis. Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) offers a framework for understanding this dynamic. SCCT provides a mechanism for anticipating how stakeholders will react to a crisis in terms of the reputational threat posed by the crisis. Moreover, SCCT projects how people will react to the crisis response strategies used to manage the crisis. From its empirical research emerges a set of evidence-based crisis communication guidelines. The development of SCCT is discussed along with the presentation of its guidelines for crisis communication.
This study expands crisis message strategies to include those used to communicate technical details and examines them across multiple new media. A content analysis of blogs, Web sites, news articles, and press releases from the 2007 pet food recall crisis reveals that when stakeholders affected by the crisis desire emotional support—most frequently found in blogs—they do not include any types of technical explanations in their messages. Yet when they want rectification—assurance that the crisis will not happen again—they use more elaborate forms of technical translation explanations. Organizational use of technical translation explanations differ between media with Web sites and news articles containing more elaborate technical translation than press releases. When technical translation details are used, dialogic links, such as Web site links, are included.
Value changes and the rapid emergence of media innovations (internet, social web) in society lead to an institutionalization of crisis communication, in which especially new media play a crucial role. The key contributions of the paper include deepening and refocusing the theoretical foundations of crisis communication by experimentally analyzing the effects of traditional and social-media strategies on the recipients’ perceptions of reputation; and by analyzing the effects or crisis responses on the recipients’ secondary crisis communications (e.g., sharing information and leaving a message) and reactions (e.g., willingness to boycott). The results indicated that the medium matters more than the message. For all three dependent measures – reputation, secondary crisis communication and reactions – main effects of medium occurred, whereas the message had only a significant main effect on secondary crisis reactions.
This research explores a phenomenon that pervades many realms of consumer behavior-the various ways that consumers cope with stress and negative emotions. In study 1, I generate and test a multidimensional scale to measure the coping construct, revealing a more diverse set of strategies than accounted for in the consumer literature on coping. I test competing theories about the hierarchical structure of the coping construct. Study 2 validates these findings and begins to establish theoretical links between the coping dimensions and their antecedent relationships with discrete emotions. In contrast to extant research linking emotions and coping, which has only investigated main effect hypotheses, I conceptualize and find empirical evidence for a model in which emotions interact with appraisals jointly to enact coping strategies. This research contributes to the emerging consumer coping literature by enriching existing theoretical conceptualizations of consumer coping processes and by validating a scale that should prove useful in consumer research. (c) 2005 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
This paper provides a formal assessment of the effectiveness of the use of fear and anger on the decision to initiate a crisis. The formalization employs the finding that fearful decision-makers are risk-averting across frames and make pessimistic risk assessments, and that angry decision-makers are risk-seeking across frames and make optimistic risk assessments. The work presented here employs a sequential decision analysis based on the two-sided incomplete information version of the Traditional Deterrence Game. The analysis shows when the use of the emotions of fear and anger is effective, ineffective, and counterproductive in altering the decision to initiate or not initiate a crisis.
The impact of organizational crises has never been stronger. Yet previous research on crisis management lacks adequate integration. In this article we attempt to integrate and build upon current knowledge to create a multidisciplinary approach to crisis management research, using psychological, social-political, and technological-structural research perspectives. We offer definitions of organizational crisis and crisis management, as well as a framework that depicts the crisis management process and researchable propositions for the integration of these perspectives. We also suggest implications for research and practice.
Through an experiment with 162 college students this study empirically evaluates an emerging communication model: the social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC). As part of a series of studies testing the SMCC model, this study focuses on two of the SMCC model's components: the effects of crisis information form (traditional media, social media, and word-of-mouth) and source (third party and organization) on publics’ acceptance of crisis response strategies and publics’ crisis emotions. The findings clearly indicate the importance of strategically matching crisis information form and source when organizations respond to crises. In addition, the selection of crisis information form and source affects publics’ attribution independent and dependent emotions.
This article considers the challenges that future crises pose for policymakers and public leaders.
This manuscript reports an exploratory investigation to integrate emotions into the study of post-crisis communication. Using the discussion of the role of affect in Attribution Theory, the research integrates emotion into Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), one approach to post-crisis communication. SCCT uses crisis responsibility, how much people believe the organization is responsible for the crisis, to determine the most effective post-crisis communication strategy for protecting the organization's reputation. The research examines the amount of sympathy, anger, and schadenfreude generated by a variety of crisis types. The focus is on the connection between these three emotions and perceptions of crisis responsibility. The results suggest how emotion can be integrated into post-crisis communication and supports the value of including emotion in future research.
The central thesis in this essay is that validity and reliability should be conceptualized differently across the various forms of content and the various uses of theory. This is especially true with applied communication research where a theory is not always available to guide the design. A distinction needs to made between manifest and latent (pattern and projective) content. Also, we argue that content analyses need not be limited to theory‐based coding schemes and standards set by experts. When researchers are clear about what kind of content they want to analyze and the role of theory in their studies, they are in a better position to select the most appropriate strategies for demonstrating validity and reliability.
Ten years ago, when the definitional article Corporate Communication as a Discipline: Toward a Definition (Argenti, 1996) was commissioned by Management Communication Quarterly, the field of corporate communication was relatively new to business schools and transitioning in the business world from the media-oriented field of public relations to 'corporate communication' - a more integrated, organizational function focused on multiple constituencies. Today, changes in the business environment, coupled with unprecedented technological changes, have significantly affected how the corporate communication function is defined, taught, and implemented in the United States and throughout the world. This article will focus on those changes with a particular emphasis on how technology has shaped the field of corporate communication. It will focus on number of questions including: how has the increase in internet use and access to information challenged corporations as they communicate with their vast array of constituents such as employees, customers, and investors? How has an increasingly mobile workforce presented challenges for corporations? What opportunities does technology present to communications professionals? The article will first reflect on key changes in the discipline over the last decade, then discuss the most significant challenges to corporate communication resulting from new technologies (such as the proliferation of new uncontrolled media outlets like web logs), the opportunities these challenges create for both academics and practitioners (such as the ability to measure and integrate the function), and how those challenges help us to rethink the focus of our research and teaching about the field of corporate communication.
This work-in-process literature review gives an overview of recent insight in the incorporation of social media in risk and crisis communication. By marrying literature and examples of social media use with best practices in risk and crisis communication, this study demonstrates how communicators can embrace social media tools to better manage a risk or crisis. Best practices in risk and crisis communication are summarized, examples of social media tools used to manage risks and crises are expounded, and recommendations for practitioners are provided to incorporate social media tools in risk and crisis communication.
This article analyses how Internet-based technologies can help companies to: monitor their business environment online in search of potentially conflictive issues that need to be managed (issues management); to prepare a crisis communications plan that considers the Internet side of today's business landscape (crisis communications planning); to respond adequately to crises should they arise by using all available online tools (crisis response); and to establish appropriate Internet-based actions once the crisis dies down (post-crisis). The article also questions whether the traditional one-way corporate approach and tone is still suitable in the new, more participative, online business environment, or whether companies should use a different tone, language, and attitude when engaging with their audiences on the Internet in a crisis situation.
As a method specifically intended for the study of messages, content analysis is fundamental to mass communication research. Intercoder reliability, more specifically termed intercoder agreement, is a measure of the extent to which independent judges make the same coding decisions in evaluating the characteristics of messages, and is at the heart of this method. Yet there are few standard and accessible guidelines available regarding the appropriate procedures to use to assess and report intercoder reliability, or software tools to calculate it. As a result, it seems likely that there is little consistency in how this critical element of content analysis is assessed and reported in published mass communication studies. Following a review of relevant concepts, indices, and tools, a content analysis of 200 studies utilizing content analysis published in the communication literature between 1994 and 1998 is used to characterize practices in the field. The results demonstrate that mass communication researchers often fail to assess (or at least report) intercoder reliability and often rely on percent agreement, an overly liberal index. Based on the review and these results, concrete guidelines are offered regarding procedures for assessment and reporting of this important aspect of content analysis.
Social media and communication technology have shifted the power of communication from public relations practitioners to social media users who may not have a recognized role or defined interest in an organization. What results is a social model of public relations in which traditional public relations responsibilities are distributed to social media users, and which depends on interactivity, legitimacy, and a user's social stake. This study explores social public relations through a qualitative analysis of user involvement on Twitter regarding relief efforts to support Haiti following the 7.0 earthquake that hit Port-Au-Prince in January, 2010. This analysis of Twitter posts also expands understanding of interactivity online and demonstrates social media user fulfillment of public relations objectives.
This study tested a cognitive appraisal model that examines the variance in publics’ emotional responses, strategies of coping with crises, and acceptance of different organizational crisis responses, as a function of publics’ appraisal of crisis predictability and controllability. A within-subjects experiment was designed to induce participants’ primary negative emotions (i.e., anger, sadness, and fright, and anxiety), which were found to have differential influences on publics’ coping strategy preference and organizational crisis strategy acceptance.
This article provides an empirical review and synthesis of published studies that have used content-analysis methods. Harold Kassarjian's critical guidelines for content-analysis research were used to examine the methods employed in 128 studies. The guidelines were expanded by providing an empirical investigation of multiple dimensions of objectivity. Reliability issues were also assessed by examining factors central to the replication and interjudge coefficient calculations. The findings indicate a general need for improvement in the application of content-analysis methods. Suggestions for calculating reliability coefficients and for improving the objectivity and reliability of research are offered. Copyright 1991 by the University of Chicago.